Cash, collaboration vital in solving cold cases

Sep. 6, 2013

Milwaukee's cold case team has used a handful of interns who have been pivotal in solving cases, including the 2009 landmark arrest of Walter E. Ellis, known as the North Side Strangler. A Milwaukee County Sheriff deputy brings Ellis into court Jan. 3, 2011. / Associated Press

Written by

Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team

About ‘Cold Cases’

Gannett Wisconsin Media is publishing an exclusive series called Cold Cases: Tracking Wisconsin’s Unsolved Murders. Cold Cases is the most comprehensive unsolved-murders project of regional and statewide interest ever assembled in a print and digital format. The Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team spearheaded the project in conjunction with local reporters at all 10 Gannett Wisconsin Media news organizations, including Post-Crescent Media. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism in Madison also partnered with the newspapers. The intent of Cold Cases is to generate new, valuable leads and tips for Wisconsin homicide investigators. Many of them have hit roadblocks or face dead ends.

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Police investigators across Wisconsin lament dwindling budgets and limited staff resources as main barriers to solving hundreds of decades-old murder cases, but help could be on the horizon.

Aside from the obvious need for more funding, state law enforcement leaders say regional task forces and collaborations with internship programs at universities could be instrumental in bringing killers to justice in many of the state’s cold cases.

Wayne Smith, president of the Wisconsin Association of Homicide Investigators, said those collaborative ventures might pay big dividends. He said police agencies may soon consider forming regional units similar to high-intensity drug investigative efforts that involve federal, state and local partnerships.

“The real question needs to be: How do you get agencies to refocus time and energy to cold cases when we’re in a time of diminishing budgets and shortages of staff?” Smith asked. “Agencies are busy putting out fires. You’ve got five guys working and six calls and the seventh is a cold case. The six come first.”

A recent monthlong series by Gannett Wisconsin Media revealed that nearly 300 murder cases in Wisconsin during a 10-year period ending in 2012 are unsolved. Reporters built a first-of-its-kind unsolved murders digital database highlighting cases as a resource tool for residents, law enforcement and victims’ families. The database has details from nearly 400 unsolved homicides dating back to the mid-1960s. Wisconsin and many other states don’t have a comprehensive list of cold cases.

Lt. Keith Balash, head of Milwaukee Police Department’s cold case unit, said funding is vitally important to solving crimes, but other methods also are effective.

Spending “$100,000 doesn’t necessarily get you a cleared case, but the more resources you can throw at an incident, immediately after it happens, has a direct correlation to how successful an investigation is,” he said, adding that the effort to solve cold cases in Milwaukee is bolstered by an innovative internship program with local universities that he says could be duplicated statewide.

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Milwaukee has a vast majority of the state’s unsolved murders — at least 600 going back to 1990. The police department’s two full time investigators clear two or three cases per year with roughly $130,000 in funding.

In 2009, when the department had support from the National Institute of Justice for DNA analysis, the number of solved cases spiked to 12, showingthat with more resources and more DNA samples, there’s a greater likelihood of solving old murder cases.

The NIJ plays the main role in funding cold case investigations nationwide. Since 2005, the agency distributed $72 million to states and individual departments. NIJ is the research, development and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Wisconsin’s Department of Justice received $1.1 million of those funds, which were directed into the Division of Criminal Investigation’s cold case unit.

The justice department’s last major windfall came in 2010, when it obtained $506,000. The cash infusion paid off in 2011, as 72 cold cases were reopened and reviewed, records show.

But the cold case activity slowed as funds were expended. So far this year, 15 cold cases have been reviewed through June, according to the DOJ records.

The dropoff, however, may not be directly tied to funding, said Dana Brueck, spokeswoman for the department. Investigators put a priority on applying funding to cases with the best chances of matching in the DNA database, then move on to more difficult cases that likely have less leads, she said.

NIJ didn’t award any funding under its cold case program in 2013 due to budget constraints. The organization plans to offer money again in 2014.

Balash said the grant money is spent quickly since it is used to send DNA samples to out-of-state private laboratories.

“One DNA test for a single item is about $2,000,” Balash said. “And that’s the most basic analysis. Most cases need multiple items and multiple tests for comparison and elimination.”

Intern model could grow

Since 2008, Milwaukee’s cold caseteam has utilized a handful of interns from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Marquette University.

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Balash says they’ve been pivotal in solving cases, including the 2009 landmark arrest of serial killer Walter Ellis, known as the “North Side Strangler.” Ellis has been linked to the murders of eight women over 21 years.

The high-stakes investigations need fresh eyes, long hours and attention to detail, but Balash said the college students have delivered and never broken the trust of the department.

“They’ve all been educated on the importance of confidentiality and what they’re about to be exposed to,” he said. “What they see and hear at the department stays here, because of the potential to jeopardize these long investigations.”

Students compete for either 140-hour single semester or 280-hour yearlong positions for three credits, said Deborah Crane, internship coordinator with Marquette’s Social and Cultural Sciences Department.

With its soon-to-expand forensics lab as part of a $32 million public safety training center, Fox Valley Technical College near Appleton could soon offer a class targeted at cold cases.

Joe LeFevre, forensic science department chair, wants to teach a course that pairs students with local investigators to examine an unsolved murder every semester. He’s yet to find a willing participant for the program.

“I have 220 students hungry for real world, hands-on experience,” LeFevre said. “It would be a great to give kids log sheets and boxes of reports and let them loose to see if they can identify and what’s viable.”

Collaboration benefits

“You have to organize cases and evaluate what was done, what needs to be done, what can we do better and what was missed,” Smith said.

Smith played a large role in reigniting a 30-year-old investigation into a 1980 homicide in Columbia County that led to the conviction of Curtis Forbes in 2010.

“That case took an awful lot of time with people working on it nearly every day for three years,” Smith said of the case involving the slaying of 18-year-old Marilyn McIntyre.

Other states have dedicated major resources to cold cases. In Arizona, the state legislature mandated a study of best practices for its individual agencies.

The 2007 report called for the annual review of all unsolved cases by agency regardless of size. It also suggested tapping partnerships across jurisdictions, retired homicide detectives and other part-time resources to focus solely on cold cases.